© 2010 Wazari Wazir
Photoshop Tone eBook
Photoshop Tone
Eyes of a Child
© 2010 Wazari Wazir
“Seek the Wisdom Of The Ages, But Look at The World Through The Eyes Of a Child”.
( Ron Wild )
All About Bokeh Photography
© 2010 Wazari Wazir
© 2010 Wazari Wazir
Bokeh come from Japanese word “boke”, which means “blur” or “haze” or “boke-aji”, “the blur quality”. To put it simple to understand “Bokeh” is the blur or out of focus area of an image, like the picture of my son and my wife above, the “Blurry” part or the “out of focus” area in the picture above is what people called “Bokeh”. I don’t want to talk about good Bokeh or bad Bokeh here, I just want to talk about how to get a Bokeh, different lenses with difference focal length and different aperture will render Bokeh differently, for the picture above I use 50mm lens shooting at f1.8. The Bokeh in the picture above is “real” meaning that, I did not get that Bokeh from Photoshop. It is captured in the camera. Read on if you wanted to know more how to get it.
First of all use wide aperture, here in the picture above I use 50mm lens and open up the aperture wide at f1.8. Don’t expect to get a Bokeh like this if you decided to use aperture f22. If you are using aperture f22, then almost everything will be in focus, almost everything will look sharp and when that happens, your subject will not going to stand out from the background and your picture will look “flat” with no depths. Remember that, use wide aperture. If your lens only have f4 as your widest aperture then use it. Usually Kit lens comes with aperture like f3.5-f4, if that is the case, use f3.5, I mean use the widest aperture that your lens have.
Next watch a distance between you and your subject and the distance between your subject and the background. You are not going to get this kind of Bokeh, I’m referring to the picture above, if the distance between your subject and the background is just one feet away. For the picture above the distance between the subject and the background is approximately ten meters away, and here’s the tips, the closer you and your subject, the better the Bokeh, I mean if I stand back away, far away from my wife and get a full body shot of them, I’m not going to get this kind of Bokeh, so I’ve to get closer to them and that’s why, I rarely post a picture of my son in full body, I will not get a “creamy” Bokeh If I do that, so the tips is to get really closer to your subject and make sure the distance between your subject and background are far away.
Just remember this simple tips, get closer to your subject and make sure your subject are far away from the background, if possible somewhere around five to ten meters from the subject. The other thing is make sure your background have some “light”, maybe a reflected light, like this picture above a light that reflect from the green foliage make an interesting Bokeh, if it is dark, then it would not look so interesting, in fact when I took this shot, I wait for a few minutes until there is a bright light hit the foliage to get that beautiful reflection. It will be so much easier to get a beautiful Bokeh at night especially if you shoot in the heart of a city centre where there is a lot of neon light that coming from rows of shopping malls or from the street light and also from the light that coming from the cars on the busy street.
Hopefully you get some basic ideas about how to get Bokeh in photography from this article, actually I do get few email asking me about Bokeh, they think I use 300mm lens to get this kind of Bokeh, most of my son pictures were taken with 50mm lens and usually I will shoot with aperture f1.8 and by this time you should know already why I like to get closer to my son when photographing him, it is not a rocket science kind of thing if you know the fundamental. With a little bit of creativity you can get a beautiful Bokeh even with a cheap 50mm lens if you know how to and by this time you should…
One more thing, to get the color or The Tone like the picture of my son above I use a technique in my eBook, The Photoshop Secret of The Tone. In the eBook, there is a tutorial about how to get the tone with Curves and RGB Channels. Get My eBook HERE
Get The Secret HERE
February 3, 2010 - 11:56 pm - Tuah : Practice makes perfect...
February 3, 2010 - 9:23 pm - thanks wazari..will keep trying again..n i'll let you know once i've succeed! THANKS!
February 3, 2010 - 5:35 pm - tq for sharing..
February 3, 2010 - 1:00 pm - gambar cantik dan sharp. entah bilalah agaknya saya mampu merakamkan detik indah dengan cantik jelas dan nyata mcm ni
February 3, 2010 - 6:25 am - Mohd Faizal : Thanks for stopping by here, among the reason why you get blurry picture or not sharp could be for different reason, on e of them could be because you are not using fast enough shutter speed, when I use 50mm at an aperture f1.8, usually I'll set my aperture from 1/100 and above, the faster the better, simply because the minimize camera shake. It is not so much because of the distance, you can actually see whether your picture is sharp or not when you compose your shot. So I think in your situation it could be because you are not using fast enough shutter speed. Just be remember when when you use aperture like f1.8, you will get very shallow depth of meaning, if there is even a slight movement of your subject, you will get "Unsharp" picture. Watch your shutter speed and press the shutter button slowly, don't be harsh or jerk the camera, because that also contribute to the "Unsharp" of your picture. Try it and please let me know...
February 2, 2010 - 11:12 pm - really amazing tutorial for beginner like me... keep it up bro...
February 2, 2010 - 10:35 pm - Hi wazari.. just need to ask you..sometimes if i used f1.8 the picture that i will get is not sharp..as in i could not get the same effect as yours, is it because of the distance? i was told that if i use the widest aperture, the subject would have a smooth effect..is it because i'm to close to the subject.. anyway, adores all of your pics.
A Moment of Happiness
© 2010 Wazari Wazir
“Whoever is Happy Will Make Others Happy, Too.”
( Mark Twain )
February 2, 2010 - 9:05 pm - Hi Wazari.. Seronok baca blog ni.. banyak ilmu yang diperolehi.. Thank you very much for sharing. send my regards to your wife & son, k!
February 2, 2010 - 3:24 am - Great portfolio !!! great work , congrats
February 2, 2010 - 3:07 am - Always be happy... ;)
A Printed Memory
- © 2010 Wazari Wazir
- © 2010 Wazari Wazir
A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years, but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind.”
(Albert Einstein)
A Moment of Childhood
© 2010 Wazari Wazir
You are worried about seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing. What! Is it nothing to be happy? Nothing to skip, play, and run around all day long? Never in his life will he be so busy again.
( Jean-Jacques Rousseau )
Child is unpredictable, they enjoy every moment, they enjoy the present and always have something that attract their attention, they are curious about anything, from a small tiny things to a bigger things. I like watching my son playing and as usual I watch him with my camera always beside me. My favorite lens for taking a picture of my son is 50mm lens, here I use 50mm f1.4 lens, I’ve two 50mm, the other one is 50mm f1.8. Even though I use 50mm f1.4 lens, I seldom open it full, usually I will use f2 or f1.8. There is nothing wrong to use f22 but most people who bought this lens wanted to use big aperture to throw away the background, to get “Bokeh”.
Some people have asked me, why their picture get blur when using 50mm at wide aperture like f1.8. The reason is very simple, if we use big aperture like f1.4 or f1.8, you will get very shallow depth of field, meaning that everything that is not in your “target” focus will be blurred. I mean, like a portrait shot here, people will focus on a person eyes so anything beyond that focusing area will be blurred, even the foreground will be blurred, not just the background, the eyes will be sharp. Then you may ask, why is it my picture, especially on the eyes are still blurred when I’ve already get a sharper image in the viewfinder?
Among the reason why the eyes still not look sharp even when they look sharp in the viewfinder, could be because one of this things. First maybe you press the shutter too hard and “jerk” the camera a bit, so the focusing will be a bit off. The other thing is maybe you are using a very slow shutter speed, I rarely use shutter speed below 1/100 when I take a picture of my son. In this picture I use shutter speed 1/400 at f1.8. Why I use fast shutter speed? My son is not an inanimate object, he can run anytime, he can move anytime, so I need to use fast shutter speed in order to freeze the moment, even if my son walk away, with a shutter speed at 1/400, I still manage to get that image. I suggest don’t use shutter speed below 1/100 when using 50mm lens at wide open aperture. Unless you are shooting landscape, a building, a statue with a tripod, then it should be okey, you can even use one minute of exposure then.
When shooting portrait, always focus on the eyes, there is an exception here, maybe you want the shirt to look sharp or maybe you want to focus on the toys that your son playing with, there are many exception depending on the situation but basically it is the eyes that should be the target of your focusing, it is easy to focus on a large part of the body compared to the smaller eyes especially when your child is running here and there, but it will be very hard to keep the eyes sharp while focusing on them, but then again who said taking picture of a small kids is a piece of cake? If it were easy everybody would get a great picture.
A great picture will be much more pleasant to the eyes if we get the right editing, the right tone, here in this picture above, I get the tone from my eBook, You can learn how to get that warmth kind of a feeling with the right tone. Get My eBook HERE
Passion and Creativity
© 2008 Wazari Wazir | Portrait of Denawan
I find it very difficult to make a Photoshop Texture eBook compared to do the editing itself. I can do texture editing in Photoshop for less than five minute from scratch but it may take month or more to do the eBook. I’m sorry for that and I’m really sorry to keep you waiting, I’m not trying to make easy money here, instead I want to make sure that my texture eBook will be easier to understand, easier to follow through and to make that happen I’ve to figure out a very simple way to share it with you.
I’ve decided to share my workflow when doing texturing editing, hopefully some of you can follow it here, those who just starting out using Photoshop might be wondering, what the heck I’m talking here, never mind, when you have more experience playing with Photoshop, you will understand it better and hopefully you can keep coming back here.
The first thing that I will do when I open a new image in Photoshop is to do some basic editing, adjusting, brightness, contrast, level and some minor things to make my picture look presentable. Then I will try to lower the saturation of the picture and if I want to make it monochromatic, I will go to Channel and click onto different channel, I mean RGB Channel, mostly I will start with GREEN Channel and lately I like to play with BLUE Channel. When I like the monochromatic image that certain Channel represent then I will copy that particular Channel, for an example If I like GREEN Channel, I will copy that Channel and put it on top of the layer in the layer palette. How to copy the Channel? You can figure it out yourself or wait for my eBook, I will show you how with a screen shot.
After that I will turn my picture into Sepia Tone before I put Texture into it. How to get Sepia tone? There are many ways to choose, same like Black and White, there are many ways on how to turn your picture into Black and White and lately I like to get my black and white from RGB Channel, I seldom use black and white layer adjustment method. I’ve try that but I don’t like it. When I feel the Sepia tone was good enough then I will open a texture file and drag it on top of my picture, if the texture layer was small in size then I will transform or scale it to make it the same size as my picture.
“Soft Light” is my default blending option for my texture work, I will start fro there, then I will duplicate the texture layer and blend it with Multiply to darken the image or put on screen mode blending option to make the texture a little bit brighter, “Screen Mode” blending option work best when you are trying to texture a picture where there is a large black area in the picture because if you use “Soft Light” blending option with a picture that have large real estate of solid black image then the texture will not be shown up, it will “Disappear” in the darkness, you have to try it in order to understand what the heck I’m talking here.
Another thing that I like to do when I do texturing work is to turn my Texture into “Smart Object”. Normally I will do this if I want to do texturing for a portrait but for landscape or anything that doesn’t involve human face, I will not turn it into “Smart Object”. Why Smart Object, simply because it is easy to go back and forth when I do my editing and furthermore “Smart Object” will automatically create a “Mask” that I will use it to “Mask” certain part of a portrait where I don’t want the texture to be too visible on the face, so I need the “Mask”. What is “Mask”?, What is “Smart Object”?, I’ve already told it before that this is not for someone who just starting out using Photoshop, but I believe when you have become more experience using Photoshop you will come back here and understand it better.
That’s how I do my texturing work, sometimes I just need one layer of texture and sometimes I need more. Sometime it took less than five minutes to do the texture work, sometimes it may took few hours or even a day just to get it right. I’m doing it because I was passionate about it, I’m not doing it to satisfy a client, I’m doing it for my self, for my own personal satisfaction, I’m not in a hurry, I think passion and creativity go hand in hand. You can’t be creative without passion. Being passionate with what you are doing is very important, otherwise you will get bored once you fail to get what you want, I can spent few hours a day playing with Photoshop, it is the only game that I play. Photoshop is like a camera, it doesn’t matter whether you are using Adobe Photoshop 7 or CS4, Photoshop is just a tool, it is you that make a difference. Some people create Masterpiece with Adobe Photoshop 7 while others just use Adobe Photoshop CS4 only for adjusting Brightness and Contrast.
Same like camera, you can take great picture with entry level DSLR camera and you can take bad picture with super duper state of the art DSLR camera. Give a passionate people anything and they will turn it into work of art. Their “Passion” is their greatest tool that money can’t buy.
*** For those of you who haven’t bought My Photoshop Tone eBOOK I highly suggest you to get one. It will really help you to follow the process even better. Tone and Texture go hand in hand, good texture editing without the right tone will not be completed…
January 31, 2010 - 8:32 am - i will waiting your ebook.... i hope usefull like last ebook
Direct Flash Photography Syndrome
© 2010 Wazari Wazir | Government Transformation Programme
This is not a beautiful artistic picture that people normally will hang on their wall, some people may think this is just a snap shot picture, a piece of cake picture that everybody can take, well easier said than done, if only you know how many photographers are here struggling to get this shot, more than twenty photographers if I’m not mistaken are struggling to fit into a very crowded space with all members of Cabinet Ministers present here. It is very tough situation.
I’ve already wrote about why PRESS photographers use “Direct Flash” before. In this situation it is not advisable to use bounce flash, to be safe and to be really safe here, I’ve no other option but to use direct flash, because I can shoot at burst, rapid shot, continuously without worrying about my flash recycle time, If in this situation I choose to use “Bounce Flash” option, definitely I will miss some of the best moment in history, I mean their laugh, their facial expression, everything keeps on changing every second or maybe less than a second.
In this situation, just forget about being artistic, forget about good composition, you can hardly move, it’s so tight, I think I’ve push some Minister aside because some photographers from behind keep pushing on me, everybody wanted this historical shot, historical moment where our current Malaysia Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, having a good time with Malaysia former Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Badawi and Tun Mahathir, it is not everyday kind of situation where we will get this moment and who knows maybe our current Deputy Prime Minister , Muhyiddin Yassin will become our next Prime Minister in the future, so I’ve four great Malaysian leaders in a single frame.
This picture is not a piece of a masterpiece, it is not a piece or artistic photography but nevertheless it is a historical picture to Malaysia whether you like them or not, that’s a different matter but most importantly I’ve captured a history where in a single frame our future generation will be able to look at them and everybody was there. Our present and past leaders are there in a single frame. I might not get this picture if I choose to shoot with “Bounce Flash” because this moment only happen for a very short time, at a fraction of a second. Nobody can tell whether we can see them together again like in this picture, so I’ve to think and act fast. Like I said before, in Photojournalism the most important thing is to tell a story with a picture. If this picture tells a story then it is good enough for me. A beautiful picture sometimes are meaningless, it is beautiful but just that, have no meaning other than just beautiful, you can take a beautiful picture everyday but you can’t shoot or captured a “Moment in History” everyday.
February 2, 2010 - 11:36 pm - perkara yang benar dinyatakan oleh encik wazari.
Camera is Just a Tool
© 2010 Wazari Wazir
Nikon or Canon? Nikon or Canon? What am I talking here, what my son picture here got to do with the Nikon or Canon, nothing actually, nothing really. Actually there are something, without a camera I would not be able to capture this image and share it with you here. It doesn’t really matter whether I use Nikon or Canon, can you tell it by looking at the picture above without going through my flickr page and searching for the EXIF File, you wouldn’t know which camera I use to get this picture.
What am I trying to say here, what am I trying to write here. From time to time I got a lot of email from someone who wanted to buy a DSLR camera which brand to buy, and the most popular DSLR in the marker today is undoubtedly Nikon and Canon. I cannot make a comparison for both of them because I use only one brand of a camera and it wouldn’t be fair for me to make a comparison, instead I will ask back to those who ask me, which one do you like? Then just buy it without thinking too much, which brand to buy. Camera is just a tool after all, it is a tool to photograph something, it is not a magic box that will automatically take great picture that will win a photography competition, it is just an inanimate object, it can’t take a picture itself, it need someone to trigger it, to push the shutter button in order for the camera to captured a picture, that’s it.
Some people buy a camera because they like the look and feel of the camera, some people buy a camera because they got an inspiration from a great photographer who use a certain brand of a camera, some people buy it because some of the world iconic image was taken by that particular brand of a camera. It doesn’t matter which drive you to choose any brand of a camera, just bought it and forget about it. You will never make a wrong decision, I’m talking about brand here, I’m not talking about the usefulness of the camera, whether you want to shoot sports, wedding, landscape, underwater, that will be discuss later or in my next article. Here I just want to make it easy for you to choose which brand of a camera to buy. How and what type of photography endeavor that you will be using your camera is another thing, another discussion.
After you bought your camera, don’t just throw away the manual, take some time to read it, don’t throw away the manual and start asking everybody about Aperture, ISO, Shutter Speed, Depth of Field and all the technical things about the camera where those things are clearly written in the manual. Don’t be lazy, just take the time to read it, if you don’t understand, what’s written there, get a dictionary, that’s how I learn photography, I will only ask people when there is no information about it in the manual.
Did you know I spent more than one year to study about photography by buying photography book and magazine before I bought my first SLR, my first camera is Nikon FM2. When I get my hand on the camera , I don’t really need to ask anybody about technical thing of the camera since I’ve done my homework. In the next article I will be talking or written more about photography than a camera, stay tune…
*** About the picture above I use The Tone from My Photoshop Tone eBook to get the color…
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